you could not move the trains fast enough, all the confederates had fought for would be lost. he could lose all of his men as well as all of the trains of weird, youand this is don't see the paintings of the battles with the trains of cattle they the drive with them and the pigs. that's one thing people say, military history, low justices is military history. it's not just the things that battlefield. it's all of the things outside of it. people more about the and events that shaped the civil war and reconstruction every eastern at 6:00 p.m. only on american history tv here 3.c-span ext on the presidency, historians and economists discuss woodrow wilson's views including policies womens and african-american rights, banking and the federal system. the wilson center in washington hosted this talk. hour and 20

minutes. >> this, i think, we'll see, may himself.ate on wilson but believe me, it will be the legacies. it will be how he, what he did or didn't do, affect us very much. before i introduced the panelists, let me say something about why to concentrate on wilson's domestic presidency. first of all, that's the presidency he wanted to have and expected to have. one of his most famous remarks, which everybody writes about him, practically, quotes, is an offhand remark he made after he was elected in 1912, to a former colleague. the quotation goes this way, and it's usually garbled a little bit, to make this world safe for democracy is garbled. he said, "it would be an irony

of fate if my administration on to conten trait chiefly foreign problems." usually it's foreign affairs, and so forth. usually the quotation, they stop there. there's another clause. he said, "for all my preparation has been in domestic matters." interesting. now, as we know, and i asked congressman hamilton what he noted about that because his quote "preparation" included two years of governor of new jersey. at that point, he had run and won only two elections. he did not have a long previous political pedigree. what he meant was his study and reflection on politics, but domestic politics. he paid some attention to foreign affairs, but not a lot.

that's what he wanted. and his measure, by the way, for success, achievement as a domestic president, was legislation, legislation more than anything else. on -- we will get into that. one other point i would like to make, there's a term i make a lot these days because the current president has made it his watch word or two watch words, "america first." in point of fact, the person who coined that term or put it into usage was woodrow wilson. in april 1915, he was looking at the world war. he was concerned that something was going to happen, where the war was going to affect us a lot more. there was the british blockade. the germans just started using submarines. it was about a month before the sinking of the lusitania. the biggest turning point in

world war i, except for us entering it, was the sinking of the lusitania. but he said our whole duty is summed up in this motto: "america first." let us think of america before we think of europe so that we can be europe's friend when the day of tested friendship comes. so it's interesting how the phrase originated and i think most of us would say he put a different spin on it than is currently there. one other little footnote to that, about a month later, another statesman, in this case a senator, was giving a commencement speech and upstate new york. and he talked about a new way of conducting international affairs. he talked about the united nations. the men who said that was henry

cabot launch. a year after that, woodrow wilson spoke before the leak to enforce peace, which tom referred to earlier, where wilson, i think the phrase is correct here, came out as internationalist, when he said he believed in international peacekeeping and adjustment of territorial matters. he shared the speakers' platform with senator henry cabot lodge. we have lots of ironies in all this. now we're going to talk about the domestic side. forgive me, again, from julius caesar, -- we're going to talk about the good and the bad, the sweet and here.our i think it's very appropriate with our panelists. catherine lavelle is from case western reserve. she teaches world affairs there. and she works a lot on money and banks.

her most recent book is money and banks in the american political system. i guess economics from kathy. she also works on international trade. the next person, i think is safe to say, is probably the most familiar face and voice of us here. it's david russell. we know him from the news hour. we know him from npr. and we know him as the previous economic senator, or economic columnist -- how would you call it, david? of the wall street journal? >> either one or both. >> i love how the wall street journal does it. they do drawings of photos. david is a familiar face. eric yellen teaches at the university of richmond, had one of my favorite presidents there talking about and heirs. -- ed ayers. eric has written an excellent

book on race and racism under the wilson administration. certainly, we'll deal with that. finally, last but by no means least is devin fergus from the university of missouri, who named after a ine historian at the university. he has also worked on, particularly economic inequality. and both, obviously, the economic dimensions of it, but social and racial dimensions of it. we've got some interesting people and we're going to talk about a number of interesting things. as one final preparatory remark, some years ago, 20 odd years ago, not here, but a different

roosevelts t the down at the kennedy center. made an kley interesting point. he said the progressives, progressivism, the progressives were very good on political justice. at least they tried to do political reform now. there could be that aspects of that, especially when we look at the south. they were good on political justice, and tried to be good on economic justice. certainly politics of economics or the center of what the progressives emphasized and fought for. he said, "but the record is spotty or just plain bad on social justice." we certainly have immigration

restriction there of, i don't consider prohibition necessarily a bad thing. there are many people who do consider it bad, as a repressive thing. i think it was meant, as intended to be, very benevolent. herbert hoover called it an experiment, noble and purpose. that's become something of a laugh line, but i think it was. but clearly the record, and the other actions beside what they went into was bad. they had lots of violence, particularly racial violence. discrimination against a number of people. about the one good thing, one of the few good things is woman suffrage, kind of a lastgasp of progressive reform. with that, where would you like to start? >> i think i would like to start by thanking everybody for inviting me, but also to point out what a special place wilson center is. i was here in 2008 and the book

alluded to, the opportunity to see what was going on in 2008 n international financial system, but also understand where the academy had gaps in understands the political system. so it really is a special place and i hope the next 50 years, i that people can go forward and take advantage of all of the great opportunities that i had when i was here. but with that said, i do think i would start where you left off a with the women's issue. i think what is important because maybe we haven't had a it today talk about and i thought i would start out remembering my grandmother. when i think about woodrow wilson, i think about going to woodrow wilson's house in the on a family trip. the house was closed. my mom said they are all the same. just look in the windows. i got in the house later with my mother and grandmother.

my grandmother remembered president wilson. it was the first president, now i'm teaching politics, who was the first president you remember? ow i tell students some day, remember, obama, you remember president obama? one day your day will come. i said what did you think of him, grandma? she wasn't terribly enthusiastic. she said he ran on the campaign he kept us out of the war, and he got us into a war. second, she would talk about women's suffrage. and i think women's suffrage for her was a special thing because her older sisters couldn't vote, and she could always vote. until the day she died in her 90's, that pride in being able to vote was something that in -- am

imbued my grandmother's sister's. so over the years, when i think about president wilson and how women's suffrage came about. on one hand, there is a great success. you have a woman born in 1902 who could always vote and was ble to vote for geraldine ferraro before she died. she could vote for someone and that i office was important to her. what we also forget about the women's suffrage movement were the contradictions in the movement, and within the wilson administration. if we think about that for a few minutes, what comes to mind? we had a president that ultimately comes on board. two wives who were strong individuals, one argued to be our first woman president. he had three strong daughters. he appreciated women and their intelligence and the rest. on the other hand, we forget how violent, the violent element that was present in the women's movement and the schisms in the movement.

what we forget is those contradictions and the kinds of problems that came about in the wilson administration are the kinds of problems we see of until the last week in american politics. what i want to point out about them women's movement, the split, is the whole sense of tactics. i was looking over again, professor cooper's excellent biography of president wilson. the commentary that his wife made about the women protesting. you remember, there were women protesting outside the white house. the police would round them up and take them to jail. they were force-fed when they went on hunger strikes. even though it was a nonviolent movement, there were certainly elements of violence. it wasn't something that came

easily to women. when we think about that, what i see coming about the commentary, within the women's movement of the times, is how women are supposed to participate in the public space. one of the quotes from edith wilson was i don't like these women who are too pushy. this whole idea, it's ok to rights in this way. and if i can interpret it to the present day, don't be too strident or too forceful. my mother would say, don't be too political. women do it to each other. there is an acceptable way, a notion of how to be attractive, how to present your views, and also an element of don't go there. i think we saw it in the last presidential campaign. we saw it in the last week. most of us who are women have certainly, perhaps heard more personal anecdotes and stories and experiences in the last week than we care to hear for a long time.

when i think about president wilson's legacy, it's hard to argue with the federal reserve. such a great expert on the federal reserve. i worked on the hill and i'm willing to talk about the federal reserve for the rest of the day. it's really important to remember women and think about how hard that struggle was. and to ask the question, why didn't i understand president wilson accepted the notion of women's suffrage at the state level and not the federal level, but how do these contradictions play out in the present era? >> well, let me, since we're on the subject of wilson and suffrage, first of all, do you see a difference between the two mrs. wilson's -- in both of their attitudes towards suffrage and women's roles?

>> well, like we were talking about before, the great thing about reading a biography of one of the wives is seeing the wife.nd and seeing the you were asking -- my impression from what i've read and you're certainly willing to disagree with it. there wasn't a terrible difference. it's just edith came around later to support, push him over the edge toward the federal movement. i don't know if that's because she lived into that era and saw what happened longer than alan did. -- ellen did. >> very quickly, i don't want to get into too much inside baseball -- wilson is a big baseball fan, by the way. i think you would agree, they were very different people. i want to give a plug to a biography, christy miller wrote

a biography of two mrs. wilson's. there are some written about edith, but ellen, although they came around at different times in his life, ellen was more of a partner in his intellectual life than edith was, and better educated woman. better educated and intellectual woman. i tried to remember whether ellen came out or quietly came out for suffrage. i don't think she did but two of out for suffrage. i don't think she did but two of his daughters did and they gave him a tough time around the dinner table, times you wish you could have a remote tv camera their recording together those things. >> he valued edith's advice.

we talk about the paris peace talks, whatever. he's an enigma when it comes to this particular issue. >> except we have to grant he was related coming around to suffrage. but he came around. two times before wilson appeared before congress, there were two times he appeared before special sessions of the senate, not a joint session. presidents very rarely do that. one time, of course, was january without "peace victory." then he went to the senate to make a special plea to pass a suffrage amendment. earlier, he met with a lot of representatives and helped push it over, get the house to

approve it. that senate attempt failed but the suffrage organizations shrewdly targeted the opponents and defeated two out of four of them. they got the message and the republican-controlled senate put it through anyway. avid, katie has said you want to talk about the fed? >> i want to talk about how profoundly ambivalent i am being on this panel. on the one hand, i have a lot of affection toward the wilson center. both of the books that i wrote as a guest scholar here. i'm really proud we did one of the serious games. we have a game on the federal budget that we did in cooperation with the wilson center. on the other hand, i find myself on the panel with four distinguished academics, one of them has memorized everything woodrow wilson ever said. [laughter]

so it's a little intimidating. let me pick up on the point you made, john. i'm interested on the economic legacy of woodrow wilson. and for people who know a lot about wilson, and i'm sure there are a lot of those, this will all be familiar ground. but it is a remarkable. -- pretty remarkable. we had the federal reserve created after the national bank was demolished by andrew jackson in the early 19th-century. we had the lasting version of the income tax. there was one by the civil war, but the one that really lasted. we had the modernization of the antitrust statute of the clayton act passed following the strengthening the sherman antitrust act, prohibiting any contract trust or conspiracy in the restraint of foreign or trade. we have the creation of the federal trade commission. we had the beginnings of the

eight hour day, for the railroad workers. then we had the ill-fated attempt to ban child labor, which i gather was undone by the upreme court but later reinstated. that's a pretty long list of things. the thing that strikes me is that, you could talk about each of them individually, and i can do that little bit, but some of the tensions in the society that resulted in those legislations are very much with us today. so the whole, incredible, long, prolonged debate over creating the federal reserve, how much it would be centralized or decentralized. should the bankers have control or politicians have control? there's a great book on this by roger lowenstein called "america's bank," which goes to great length to bring the amount of work wilson did.

but a lot of that stuff reappears in 2008 and is with us today. how much should the government run the banking and how much should we let bankers do it? how much power do we let concentrate and washington, how much in new york? who should make appointments to the federal reserve? today we have a legacy of the wilson federal reserve act, as modified in 1935, were presidents of the 12 regional fed banks are appointed by separate boards of directors, subject to approval by the board in washington. that's still very controversial that notion of how important it is the society control credit, that democracy has some constraints on the bankers, is very much a current issue. similarly on antitrust efforts, of course the antitrust law was tightened in the wilson years. but over time, particularly in the 1950's and 1960's, things

were pretty stringent. a lot of them were for been. - a lot of mergers were actually forbidden. thanks to work done, in the 1980's we began to undo that. and we have a much more different approach, much more lenient approach, or maybe you of to weigh the virtues more efficiency against the harm of consolidation. mergers between suppliers and customers, there nothing wrong with that. now we see ourselves wondering if that was the right thing. interesting work going on about how much concentration of market power is too much in various industries. how do we deal with the evolution of the economy? is amazon a giant predatory pricing machine that puts retail out of business and then raise prices? how do we think about it one

up all and google buy of these little acorns before oaks but never become antitrust groups? the institution wilson and his allies bequeath are very much with us today. secondly, some of the tensions in society between winners and losers, creditor and borrower, that created those institutions in the progressive era, are very much current issues today. this is not talking about the past as if we were talking about the pre-electricity era. >> you didn't mention brandeis. would you like to? >> no, but i think it would. [laughter] obviously, it's really interesting. we'll talk some about race and racism, but he was a man that put a jew on the supreme court first.

and then i think also, brandeis was very suspicious of organized power and business. he clearly must have had an influence on him. i think you should tell us what it was because i'm in over my head here. [laughter] >> i can't imagine that. i was thinking, i will say something about the brandeis appointment in just a second. brandeis, the two men met for the first time after wilson was nominated. various people were coming to democratic nominee and this well known and very who had sial lawyer written quite a bit about to see wilson. it's fair to say it was a genuine meeting of minds. it was quite extraordinary. brandeis certainly influenced wilson, but brandeis was also telling wilson was he wanted to hear, and pushing him further into directions he wanted to go.

he was influenced first on the campaign and the issue of economic concentration in the campaign was more tactical and strategic. wilson was already going in that direction. brandeis was basically giving him ammunition and targets in that. then when the new freedom legislation is going through, brandeis i would say was more important advisor than anyone else in forming the fed. and that was, listen if without obamacare was hard to get through and complicated and everything, those things into doing the fed, oddly, brandeis didn't play that much role in the antitrust legislation. i certainly read a lot about it, and i spoke to brandeis'

biographer and you don't know there. when brandeis went to the supreme court, if wilson was a prejudiced person, which he was, i think particularly across the color line, not so among whites. and not only did he appoint brandeis, the first jew to the supreme court, he appointed the first jew to the new jersey supreme court. he appointed the first catholic to the faculty. within this side of the color line, he was not so bad on that. what was really quite amazing about the brandeis appointment, and in some ways, forgive me, this kavanaugh appointment reminded me, i once said if you wanted an analogy for the shock and controversy elegy of brandeis, it would have been as if carter or clinton tried to appoint ralph nader to the supreme court.

that's what a red flag rand ice was to economic -- brandeis was to economic conservatives. it was a hard-fought battle, and brandeis' confirmation was very much across party lines. i think there were four republicans who voted for him. only one democrat voted against. that's controversial supreme court fights, american as apple pie. anything else? >> no. >> okay, eric. you want to talk about anything else but race? [laughter] >> i want to talk about a lot of things other than race. first of all, thank you for including me. i should say i'm here neither to bury nor to praise. [laughter] >> neither to bury or praise cooper or wilson? [laughter] >> i can praise john cooper for the rest of the panel. that's easy.

i want to go back to the quotation from alan brinkley's, brilliant historian. i'm loath to disagree slightly, but i want to push on the idea that regresses, we can build a formulation of progressives were good on this, that on that. the challenge for analysts and historians is to try to figure out why, and step back from these are the accomplishments and these early failures. rather, think about how these go together. brandeis, for example, wilson does this remarkable thing, fights for the people's attorney. who had done work for women, who had done for working-class

people, unions, and yes, he's a jew. that's supposed to be really brave, and it is. on the other hand, brandeis is a kentuckian, and there's a meeting of the minds that he is not a threatening presence to wilson. wherever he worships, wilson couldn't feel comfortable in front of brandeis. that's a way of getting into this question. what is the good and the bad come from? where are wilson's comfort points? another way to do this is to think about how accomplishments can be failures. if we look at a list of a congressman's for wilson and his administration, they get more interesting when we think of them as also failures in certain ways, ways that present problems and tensions for us today. one example is wilson's democrat election, first since taylor. that's an, spent. -- an accomplishment.

is also part of an exclusion of african-americans from the pacific way of life. this is an accomplishment, this reconciliation, burying of the hatchet of the civil war, and made on the backs of african-americans. wilson's contribution to that was to make that exclusion reasonable. wilson was such a remarkable and articulate voice for reasoned discussion. the value of discussion. one of the dangers was that wilson could talk his way around almost anything. another accomplishment is the inclusion of labor. when you put samuel gompers into his work cabinet, and the eight-hour law, these are accomplishments. they are very much preserved capitalist world order, and ensure there would be no labor party.

labor would be given its bit role. the united states did not want to go to war. they fought for a man who would keep them out of the war. that came at the cost of civil liberties violations, and a vision of free speech that i think is contrary to the one we hold today. the one we hold today is developmental of responding to wilson's a, strength of creating a unified american public. the versailles treaty is an affirmation of global leadership. it ends the war, but doesn't and imperialism or colonialism. women's suffrage, victoria brown has a great article in your volume about what brings wilson around to women's suffrage was reassurance from his daughter's that women would still be women even as they are voters, which gives you a sense the limits of

wilson's imagination for what it means to be a civic participant. he was honestly worried, i think, that politics was a duty game and women would be dirty. he was convinced by the maternal list argument -- maternal list argument. he was not convinced this was required for women's equality. he thought she could be her own person without the will to vote. he's convinced women should be a part of the electorate, but not on terms as we would recognize today as progressive. all these contradictions are not good on this, that on that. b they -- bad on that. they are a part of the legacy he bequeathed us. >> just a second, devin. you're on shortly.

[laughter] i am interested in, and i like what you say about sectional reconciliation. i would agree about that. i read this recently in the new yorker, neglect in making the point, -- nick lemmon making the point, what we have in politics now is the price of having kept the union together and having kept the south in. i've always agreed with frederick douglas that garris was awful when he said let them go, but the point that successes can also be failures, what intrigues me, and tom brought this up, and maybe you would like to expand on it, is that wilson, yes, is the first southern born president since zachary taylor. he was a seven expatriate, the. -- southern expatriate, though. in 1897, he was off for the

presidency of the university of virginia. not yet president of princeton, not just another professor, but still another professor there. here's the dream job for an academic in the south. and given who wilson was, almost certainly an entrée into politics. i think he could have easily become governor of virginia and maybe he had his childhood, boyhood, or young manhood ambition to be a senator, too. but he couldn't become president of the united states. he had to be from new jersey. he had to be a southern expatriate. what intrigues me is, in this second sectional regression at the expense of african-americans, let's look at the republicans. ever since rutherford hayes, this is where more and more of

them wanted to go. the last gasp of some federal intervention on behalf of african-americans in the south and for voting, was the logic of the federal elections bill. that's the last gasp. after that, and even before that, to me this is an unseemly spectacle of the republicans doing everything they could to distance themselves and diss african-americans in the south. they want to make the south a politically competitive region. for them, that means how do we appeal to southern whites? they could have made it a competitive region by letting a few people, republicans in the south who wanted to vote, who happened to be african-americans. how do you put that in context?

>> so, this requires to let the republicans off the. i don't think it does -- off the hook. i don't think it does. i think what roosevelt does in 1912 was tried to build a republican party with a white south. i think the difference, or the piece that makes this unique to wilson or makes wilson an important player in racial politics is different or stands kind of moral failure of white leadership in total, certainly existed, is that parties updates is something new. let me put it this way. we usually want to defend wilson as a man of his times, and he certainly was, and he was not a pitchfork wielding southerner, which he wasn't.

tillman.t ben he was a pacific nationalist. and yet, what republicans had allowed to continue, and that wilson would crush, was a center of black power and center of black politics in washington and in the federal government. given the constraints of the time, given what african-americans were up against, a better history than i am called the nadir of american race relations, given all that, to have the federal government has a place african-americans could pursue careers, have influence, find people that could help them in one way or another, it was extraordinarily important. for example, there's a white party on the march in mississippi during the roosevelt administration, and they want to make a lily white republican party and booker washington manages to get into the era of

roosevelt. those kinds of connections were critical, some semblance of black politics and black power. it's wilson's administration, through not merely segregation, but capping of black access to power in washington that leads utterly at thens mercy of white leadership. and that's new. at the time, the ordinary thing to do was to appoint a few token black people and nod a little bit to white lynching is bad and move on. wilson did something and wilson's administration even more. i think john is absolutely right, this didn't start from wilson. what the wilson administration seek and destroy any

sem blaps of black power. o those opportunities to salvage something wouldn't exist gain really until a little bit under roosevelt would begin to play this role. that's new. that's not of his times. he didn't have to do that. there were black democrats. he didn't want to. he didn't see that as a productive way to deal with his base. he didn't see that as important because african-americans were not an essential part of his pacific nationalism. that's wilsonian as much as it is american. >> one just question, why then do the republicans continue that? >> that's a great point. it's not as if he comes in, african-americans suddenly have access to power. there's two pieces to that. roosevelt showed you could construct, you can try to be a national party without african-americans. the republican party had long

kept african-americans in the fold because it was their only shot of vote in the south. to be a national party, launch thought you should include african-americans. roosevelt suggested that's not necessarily the case. that there are new issues. taft had an economic program he thought could appeal to the whites. here is an element of shifting politics and an element that by the time wilson is president, any black votes. but i think there's a third piece that gets overlooked, wilson's own argument for why african-americans could reasonably be excluded from full citizenship and from the electorate. and that was that they caused friction. they caused a kind of disharmony

that progressives found problematic. the thing of progressive politics was we would find a way to have harmonious relations between industry and labor, between voters and government, between capital and those without means. so if african-americans are this harmonious, they may have to step aside. that was the argument he made to william munro trotter. let's not go too fast with this. let's ensure we can do right and we will do right for all. that requires an historical amnesia to what has gone on in washington before that, which was african-american participation. right after the civil war, into the wilson administration, there were black people in washington, assuming power. wilson says you don't have to do that. we can be reasonable, fair, harmonious without it.

and that gives harding, coolidge, others cover to not worry to deal with, as you said, this pesky issue of race. african-americans are simply not fully realized people in the political imaginations of democrats or republicans by 1920. wilson supplies the vocabulary to make that happen. that's a part of his legacy. >> actually, i would agree with you on the failure of imagination. trade has a nice way of characterizing that in his book, too. devin? you want to talk about economic inequality? >> not really. [laughter] i'd much rather talk about something else. again, thank you so much for inviting me here.

i too am a former wilson center fellow. not simply during the working hours that was so useful for my career and research, but after hours as well. the actual title for my book, "the land of the fee," came from the fellas i was here. this place holds a dear spot in my heart. as for inequality, sort of the domestics, pick up on the idea that woodrow wilson's policy embraced policies and promoted policies that protected democratic capitalism. that was part of the central agenda for the wilson administration. it sort of argued opportunities had been locked for americans in previous decades for the 21st century, the gilded age, that his a ministration was to unlock these opportunities by promoting

democratic capitalism. he did it in ways of tariffs he used. not to defeat his argument, but you pulled from charles your sleep that tariffs -- beardsley, tariffs were away to improve and increase competition. and so, can embrace the induction of tariffs as a way to improve competition. and by inducing tariffs, you can also then attack issues of trust. so the issues of antitrust, as well as tax, as david mentioned, the implementation of a progressive income tax policy,

one in which that a compromise deal that was worked out was 1% taxes for incomes $4000 a year or higher, which is roughly $100,000. >> i was going to ask you. >> today's dollar. so a progressive tax policy, another means in which to unlock opportunity to bring back concentration, concentrations of wealth that the wilson met administration tried to target, and antitrust measures, whether the clayton bill, which was designed in part to attack issues of predatory prices, attack issues of merging and acquisitions, and interlocking directories, a major issue in that period of time. then you have things like the ftc, federal trade commission, these measures were designed to protect and promote democratic

capitalism. but again, the embrace of democratic capitalism, not that it has its limits, but simply to that argument, was also rolling back democracy or controlling document --democracy. much of the conversation this is how do you capitalism mocratic and economic justice, political reconciled how do you it with social justice? the argument is that is not you simply try to reconcile, but these things are interdependent. what happened is a concentration of wealth in which a large slice of society feels quite

precarious about the economic position in society. and the way to address that, i'm not sure of the personal opinions of his positions, but the way to address that per carry and working-class individuals is in part by addressing issues of segregation. it's not that segregation or issues of race in rolling back issues of democracy is ever console of all with these things. it's integral to them. we have issues of anxiety of a class. how do you address that? perhaps rolling back some of the opportunities another population, more vulnerable, has. when the administration goes without segregating federal

employees, for instance, continuation of radius administrations, -- previous administrations, one of the reasons is that we don't want black supervisors over white clerks. there's a great anxiety, particularly in this window of time when you have concentration in class and carry, that you have to address that in many ways by rolling back the access above the population. i'm living in the u k this year, and they talk about the argument that the population is left behind in a way that is by targeting immigrant populations. the question of the per carry of the population and the policy is often rolling back the policies

for historical over populations. >> would you elaborate on that, devin? give us an example of how one of these economic policies -- and i think you're exactly right, what wilson was about. i think this is where brandeis really supplied him, egged him on, gave some depth to it, was it was about opportunity. 1912, david blight, a few others and putting me, said the 1912 election, the main act was a competition for the mantle of lincoln. now, for -- it was the savior of the union. for wilson, it was the high path he uses of the self-made man. but how do you see this

necessarily being, having to be at the expense of african-americans? i'm not saying that's wrong, but could you elaborate on that? >> sure, i think the 1912 election is a wonderful election. i see the election as a proto-consensus period. the candidates are embracing this similar progressive policies and only a fracture of -- fissure comes over the issue of suffrage. >> i think i might disagree with that, but i would like to hear what you have to say. go ahead now. [laughter] >> again, to summarize the question, how does this come at the expense of --? michael katz writes about how the main economic vehicle for mobility is employment. and public appointment -- public

employment and private employment can provide economic mobility, but also a baseline or floor for black poverty. you would have the protections of government at work, health care, retirement package, those kinds of things. and so by targeting those things, and addressing implement of african-americans would be targeting economic mobility. that would be one example. >> what kind of numbers are we talking about? how many people are being affected by this? >> ok. i think at some level, and this gets back to some of my more recent research, the 1980's,

that when you talk about public employment -- is one thing when you do it at the federal level. you also send signifiers down the economic or -- at the state or local level. not simply during that period, but also across time. it's not typically what happens it during the wilson administration, but also happens at the state level and subsequent administrations, whether harding or coolidge. coolidge thinks you don't have to address african-americans. so he takes a role on the dire bill. he's is a pillage of the population. i think the numbers might be less relevant than the symbolism, the politics that place. >> sure. you mentioned the dire bill, the

anti-lynching bill, which was 9024, 1925 -- 1924, 1925, in there? the whole history of anti-lynching, wilson did, first president to come out and denounce lynching. someone say that's late. i agree. some would say it's not as strong. i would agree, too. interesting his primary rationale is it makes us look bad to the rest of the world. to be fighting for democracy when we have this going on here. many remember racism at homes make the commies have more appeal to them. you have that, then you have these attempts at antilynching bills. to me, the most interesting ones, was it 1938, and under fdr? there was a wonderful, and in

some ways, i think we see a turning point in the politics of race in this country there. remember, the southern southerners are filibustering and there's a junior senator from missouri, first-termer, who's friends with the senate. they're his buddies. he's talking with did russell and jimmy burns, says, talks about his southern roots, said, "boy, i'd like to be with you boys on this one, but i can't. because the knee grow vote in st. louis and kansas city is too important." >> absolutely right. democracy is destiny. you had a congressman at a st. louis who, all of a sudden -- congressman.

>> exactly, republican, is a champion of and damaging. -- antilynching. his congressional district changed, and increasingly after americans migrated out of the city, lo and behold, they are able to vote and shift political position. >> and the first african-american to be elected to congress from the north was oscar decrease -- >> oscar decrease, exactly. and a migrant, too. he's a migrant from alabama. >> and economic conservative. it's really fascinating because when you look at what wilson says in 1918, his inspiration is the lynching of rubber praeger, a german-american -- robert

praeger, it's a statement about what the american spirit is. this is what i think is remarkable. he can make a statement about the most vile form of race relations in the united states, which is lynching, which 5000 innocent people are not only murdered, but publicly humiliated and torn apart, quite literally, and not make it about race and not make it about quality for african-americans, but somehow the american spirit or the war effort. that, to me, is why we have to talk about wilson in these issues, even as we're surrounded by racists. theodore roosevelt was racist, harding had no interest in african americans. wilson's contribution was to make racialized issues not about african-americans in the same way the dire bill becomes about dire and not the black women in

washington, d.c. standing outside his congressional door every day demanding he do something about this. they know he's vulnerable. they know there are politics back home. they take him. we don't -- they pick him. we don't know why they have the access they do. they come to washington for the federal jobs. they have access to dire and they can twist dire in ways that are powerful and important. unless, of course, the president says i'm not interested in that. i have to stand by my base. >> we'll get to you folks in just a second. i wondered if katie or david would like to have any final words here. >> the thing that strikes me about these conversations is that if you step back and think woodrow wilson died before we had talking movies, before we

had ballpoint pens, before we had scotch tape. 100 years ago is a longtime. imagine, it's impossible for me to imagine what people will be talking about on this stage in the year 2118. yet so many of the issues we discussed here, what is the role of the president in racial tension? what is the role in dealing with relations between men and women? what is the role in terms of balancing the interests of economic power and workers? it's just so remarkable to me that although specifics are very different, and think god we don't have 5000 lynchings a year, but we certainly have racial violence. women can vote, but we have issues about what the role of women is in society. 100 years later, we're grappling with so many of the same issues.

one, it's remarkable. two, it's why people are getting phd's in history. [laughter] >> i have a phd in political science. i'll talk about legislation because one thing we get from wilson's legacy, i think president wilson understood when legislating, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.